Monday, January 20, 2014

Today Paisley is 19 months old! I feel like she has grown up so much over the past few months. It looks like the last time I blogged a monthly post for Paisley was when she was five months old! It is hard to believe how much has changed since then.

This morning she weighed about 20.5 lbs on our bathroom scale, and I have no idea how tall she is. She is still really little compared to kids her age in the United States, but in South America she seems about the same size as a lot of other kids her age. Her third canine tooth came through this past week, so we have one more of those and then we should get a little break before the next set of molars come in, I think.

Where do I even begin to describe our fun little girl?

Paisley is a chatterbox! All day long she talks and talks and talks to me, mostly in phrases. For a while I kept track of how many words she knew, by adding to a list whenever she started using a new word correctly. I gave that up several months ago, after she had around 800 words and the list became too difficult to maintain. Now, she has a lot more than that! She knows plurals, possessives, and gerunds (-ing words), plus shapes and colors. She knows a lot of letters and letter sounds, and she is very interested in numbers but she only knows 1, 2, 3, and 5. (Usually she just counts "1, 2, 1, 2...many!") When she drops things she says "oopsie daisy" and it is adorable every time. I kind of want to record everything she says for a day, so that we remember what she is like right now!

She also knows some words in Spanish: hola, gracias, chau, que rico, mañana, vamos, casa, papa, nado, agua, ducha, linda, and probably a few others that I am forgetting. She is constantly making friends with people around us, partially because she is blonde, and partially because she grins at people and then they melt when they hear her say "hola" or "gracias". People are always stopping to tell her how pretty she is, or touch her, and she is usually tolerant and friendly.

Paisley loves to "draw" and "write" which both mean 'to scribble'. If she sees me writing something she suddenly desperately wants the pen I'm using so that she can draw or write. She also enjoys coloring, with crayons or ColorWonder markers. And she loves to paint, especially when she can make handprints. She really likes handprints, or if we're not painting then she likes to have me trace her hand.
Paisley also loves to swim! Uruguay has been colder than we expected, so we haven't done much swimming since we left Panama, until about a week ago. She is so delighted when we go swimming--she keeps a huge grin on her face, and she squeals with excitement! She is good at kicking, and not very good at scooping anymore. We will keep practicing.

Paisley loves her iPad mini that we gave her for Christmas. Her favorite games are Endless Alphabet and Endless Reader.

She likes to help (usually by carrying bags or cleaning up stuff she has dropped, or helping carry laundry outside, or by mixing things in the kitchen), and also likes to be with me. Actually, she loves to be with me.

She also loves when I read to her, and she likes to pretend to read books.

Paisley loves to be gotten, which is where I say "I'mmmm going to get you!" and then I start to creep towards her, and she squeals and runs to me.

She loves using the remote to open our front gate. She likes taking lids off of things and putting them back on. She likes checking the kitchen trash to see if we have added anything interesting. She loves to crack eggs. She loves colored baths, although we don't have a tub here, so that was mostly just a treat on our vacation to the US.

Paisley is also very sweet. She used to very very sweetly say "Love!" and hug me. Now she says "love you" or sometimes even "I love you"... but I noticed this weekend it almost always precedes her asking for something, which is disappointing, although I guess it just means she is smart if she is making kind of clever attempts to manipulate me. "Love you. Nana? Ookkaaayy." Or, "I love you too. Up? Ookkkkaaayyy!" She asks for things and then says "Oookkaaayyy!" or "All riiiight" just like I do for the times that I do agree to what she wants. That's kind of funny.

Thursday, January 02, 2014

Especially when I scroll through pictures on my phone, I sometimes think baby photography--meaning, photos taken by babies--is an interesting (and under-appreciated) art. Paisley absolutely loves cameras. When I scroll through the pictures she has taken, they are always from an unusual perspective, usually accidental, and sometimes beautiful.

One of the reasons we decided to get her an iPad mini for Christmas was because we wanted to encourage her in her love of cameras, in a toddler-proof way. I have already noticed her playing with the camera a couple times, so it will be fun to see how her little hobby develops as she gets a little older, more coordinated, and has appropriate tools at her fingertips.

Here is some of her art that I have on my computer already (so these ones were taken on our Canon PowerShot A1200). I will have to post some of the ones from my phone another time.

Paisley also loves to change the camera's settings to inspire creativity for others.

11/3/2013 - Self portrait.

11/3/2013 - The ceiling.

11/3/2013 - Self portrait.

11/10/2013 - Self portrait after chocolate

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11/10/2013 - Self portrait.

11/15/2013 - Waiting for Mom to assemble my slide.

12/15/2013 - Self portrait.

12/15/2013 - Mom's purse. She also calls it my diaper bag, so that means it is "Paisley's", and it is full of things to entertain me at any moment (like when she is carrying me on the same side as her purse and I can reach in to grab something).

12/15/2013 - Self portrait.

12/15/2013 - Sitting behind Mom. This is the space between us. I hate that space.

1/2/2014 - Side view from below a table, with three packs of labels. I cannot resist giving that doily a good tug sometimes!

I have had some interesting ideas about
the future—things are changing very quickly. I think facial
recognition technology is fairly advanced; if you think about Google
Glass, and about Facebook grid search, and the progress in voice
recognition, transcription, and translation...I can imagine a world
where strangers who meet me in the street can instantly review and
sort all of my Facebook comments, my pictures, and my blog posts;
they could search for specific things, or they could make
generalizations, or they could chart trends (I'm thinking of the
little programs that will already analyze our Facebook profiles or
blogs and tell us detailed things about ourselves). Even information
that is private now—such as e-mails I've sent, or things I have
typed in and then deleted without posting it or sending it or saving
it anywhere—this information is in databases somewhere, and who is
to say that those databases could not eventually become public on
purpose or because someone or everyone decides they must be...and I
just wonder, of course, I am human, and what if I blog something that
offends someone, or is accidentally factually incorrect, or who knows
what, and then that information is there for interpretation in
contexts that I don't even understand yet. It seems like everyone
knowing everything is bound to happen sooner or later, and I think of
the math question about how fast a stadium can be filled with water,
and I can see that technology is advancing very rapidly. That makes
me think I should delete everything and never post anything, in the
spirit of “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than
to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.”

And then I think, by the time everyone
knows everything about everyone, silly attempts to conceal human
weakness will be irrelevant at best or deceptive at worst, and most
likely, nobody will care, because it turns out everything is just
about math, and once we have enough of the code figured out, solving
x will be obvious, and it will be hard to judge anyone for anything,
because it's just math. You would never look at a forest and judge
one of the trees harshly, because it just really doesn't matter if
one tree is a little taller than another tree, because they're just
all growing towards the light, and a crooked tree is strong in its
own way because it is kind of amazing that the tree was able to take
advantage of different opportunities to reach light in a place where
there wasn't much.

I am also a little afraid to blog
because I could be wrong about things and be embarrassed later. Or,
I could accidentally offend someone, and later cause someone to be
angry. On the Internet it is impossible to take anything back after
it is said, or even after it is “thought”.

I can just imagine going for a job
interview and having someone present me with things I said that were
not thought through well enough, or “evidence” that I wouldn't
do the job well based on something I admitted or did poorly years
before. But after that kind of paradigm shift, maybe everyone will
have things like that.

And, if I am earnestly trying to be a
good person—which I think I am trying to do—maybe that kind of
record is a positive thing.

Last Sunday in Sunday School they were
talking about the ten virgins, and I had the thought that the story
totally matches my idea of what is coming. Once everything is known,
it will be too late; what we will have done will already be done, and
it will be available for full review, and it will be too late to
revise and add new “drops” of oil or become “good” (whatever
that means).

by Paisley, Jan 2014

My ideas about technology are very
interesting to me as I think about religion and the gospel. Think
about this: if everyone knew everything about you, how would you want
to be? If people could use micro-drones to kill anyone, or pass
whatever judgment they felt was just...how would you prepare for
that, if you knew that it was coming? You would love your brother as
yourself, for sure. The best
you can do is to love others as much as yourself, and if you've loved
them that much, how can anyone expect more, because that was the best
you could do? Or, if you wanted to get specific, to prepare for that
kind of world where everyone knows everything you wouldn't steal,
lie, or commit adultery. And if you had a history of that kind of
stuff when things changed, everyone would suddenly know, and it would
become a problem for you.

My big
ideas about technology and the future have me increasingly convinced
that the Bible and the Book of Mormon are true. I used to feel like
there was a conflict between religion and technology (or “logic”),
and then I started to feel like they must blend somehow
but over the past few months I've figured it out. I've had a
paradigm shift, and everything makes so much sense. Technology is
truth, the gospel is truth, and comments about advances in technology
being “for” the gospel totally miss the mark. The Internet is
not just to help people do family history or watch movies about
Jesus, although those things are nice; it is much, much, much bigger
than that: technology is how the gospel happens. I may write more
about this later. Now that I understand, I am very interested to
read the scriptures again because I think I will come away with some
really amazing insights that will help me understand what is coming
and know how to prepare for it.

Anyway,
back to my original topic, I feel some anxiety about how online
sharing will affect my future. I think I will continue to write anyway.